TORONTO – Canada says it will commit to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 amid international efforts to create a new framework for addressing climate change.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government said Friday it has now formally submitted its target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of the climate change conference in Paris this year.

Harper's government pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2011, saying the accord would not help solve the climate crisis. That dealt a blow to the anti-global warming treaty, which had not been formally renounced by any other country.

Canada's previous Liberal government signed that accord in 1997 but did little to implement it, and Harper's Conservative government never embraced it.